No 3 Spring 2011 - Estonian Literature

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10 Books from Estonia Maarja Kangro Maarja Kangro MONKeys aNd 6 MaarJa KaNGrO (b. 1973) has published four books of poetry and a book for children. Ahvid ja solidaarsus (Monkeys and Solidarity, 2010) is her first book of fiction. For her poetry, she has won the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Award for Poetry, and twice the Literary Award of Tallinn University. She has written five opera libretti and other texts for music; she writes literary criticism and has translated poetry, philosophy, and fiction from Italian, English, and German into Estonian. PUbLishiNG deTaiLs Ahvid ja solidaarsus Eesti Keele Sihtasutus, 2010, pp. 192 Rights’ contact: Ilvi Liive at estlit@estlit.ee awards Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Award for Prose 2010 Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award 2010 seLecTed TiTLes iN TraNsLaTiON Heureka (Eureka) Udmurt No 3 Spring 2011 sOLidariTy If such a phenomenon were possible at all, it could be said of Maarja Kangro that she is the female intellectual Bukowski. The first-person protagonist of Kangro’s short stories looks at the world with a cheeky eye; she passes through dim evenings and nights in various European cities, she is open about sex, even predatory. She is not afraid of anything, is almost violent, at the very least challenging. The men around her mostly seem inept – mentally blocked, excessively childish or downright impotent – they tend to be gentle and vacillating beings. Apart, of course, from the “monkeys”, as the first-person protagonist (both ironically and sincerely) calls the road-workers, with their brutish ways. Hence the teasingly sneering name of Kangro’s only collection of stories to date, Ahvid ja solidaarsus (Monkeys and Solidarity, 2010). But this reference to monkeys leaves no special place for the macho men, as if they were a different species; there is not much to discuss about them – or if there is, it is with some more intelligent man, in studying the meaning of solidarity. This sequence of stories deals with the attempts of a young woman approaching middle age, the protagonist, to get pregnant. Here, men are viewed and admonished repeatedly as “a sperm bank”, and the hero is searching for good eugenic material – indeed, at times even frantically, aimlessly, and she would not rule out taking the first man she comes across on the beach. At the same time, all her attempts are doomed to fail, the body will simply not obey the command and submit to the search for a pregnancy. The noble efforts to acquire progeny, to reproduce her own genetic material, decay into promiscuity, into idly rolling around this world. The question of tolerance is viewed with a jaundiced, playful eye: there is a violent solution to a quarrel about a cultural issue, when one lady at a Baltic film festival in Rome expresses contempt for small cultures; there is a provocative defence of the ‘Bronze Soldier’ incident in front of employees of foreign embassies in Estonia; physically repulsive and mentally odd people are viewed with disgust, in addition to the case of the ‘monkeys’ already mentioned, with an ironical view of the male sex. Yet the arrow of black humour is here primarily aimed at the views and way of life of the protagonist herself. The scene of Kangro’s action is an ageing, museum-like Europe – a secure and romantic place in which people are most ambushed by their own passions, and ‘multiculturalism’ is mostly expressed in the darkness of the eyes of a man chosen as a sexual partner, or in petty intellectual disputes where too much wine is drunk. Her method is old-fashioned and Hemingwayesque in a positive sense: often, only the tip of the iceberg is showing, and what happens is a reference to a world which arouses the reader. The style is amusingly haughty, enjoying the challenge, while in Kangro’s bold heroine(s) there is something ridiculous to mitigate them. It is as if, ultimately, this world cannot be taken very seriously, but rather it is just a Bukowskian experiment: what happens in the laboratory of the world when a strange, unexpected sort of catalyst is introduced into it.
10 Books from Estonia Kristiina Ehin The MaN whO Made The Kristiina Ehin sUN sTaNd sTiLL sOUTh-esTONiaN fairy TaLes Kristiina Ehin: “I have selected these fairy tales from the vast treasury stored at the Estonian Folklore Archives and retold them. These are fairy tales for young and old which embolden us to take the reins of life into our own hands in spite of hardships, to stand up for what is right and just and resist evil. Reading these tales of wonder, let us listen to the wonders hidden within us.” Poet Sujata Bhatt on Kristiina Ehin’s poetry: “Here is a generous, honest imagination: visceral, shamanistic and wise. She is a visionary poet with a discerning and distinctive voice, a voice resonant with genuine passion, close to the primordial world of spirits and myths but also rooted in history and in contemporary life. There is a refreshing lightness and originality to her poems, which are nonetheless poignant. She is able to express strong emotions without being sentimental. Her work has truly haunted me; it has entered the deepest layer of my being with its rare combination of directness and subtle nuances, ancient traditions and modernity.” Translator Ilmar Lehtpere on translating Kristiina Ehin: “In translating Kristiina Ehin’s poetry I have the great good fortune of translating the work of the poet I admire most in any language. Not many translators are able to say this. Kristiina’s very contemporary poetry is imbued with folklore and folk song and hence with fundamental human experience. She increasingly makes use of folk music in her readings and incorporates traditional regilaul, a two thousand year-old, still living form of Estonian folk song, in some of her poems. Continuity is central to her work, indeed she has said that she regards herself as heir of the ancient Estonian tradition of female singer-poets. Her poetry spans centuries, millennia. That is at once modern and primeval. There is a timeless quality in her work, and this of course applies to her use of language as well.” KrisTiiNa ehiN (b. 1977) has become one of the most successful poets of the younger generation. Her fourth and most voluminous collection of poems, Kaitseala (The Protected Zone, 2005), written during a year spent as nature reserve warden on an uninhabited island, Mohni, off the north coast of Estonia, was a real bestseller, and Luigeluulinn (Swan-Bone City, 2003) sold out three printings. Ehin does nothing to appeal to her readers. On the contrary, she claims that she writes about the things that only she herself feels attracted to and touched by, and declares that she does not strive for popularity. Kristiina Ehin’s poems have been translated into English, Russian, Swedish, Slovenian, Icelandic, Finnish, Slovak, Udmurt, Komi and German. Her poetry selection from her collections, The Drums of Silence (2007), translated into English by Ilmar Lehtpere, won a prestigious prize for poetry in translation, the Poetry Society Popescu Prize. Her most recent poetry collection in English, The Scent of Your Shadow, a selection of poems from Ehin’s most recent book Emapuhkus, 2009 again in Ilmar Lehtpere’s translation, published in April 2010 by Arc Publications, received the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation award while still only a manuscript. PUbLishiNG deTaiLs Päevaseiskaja. Lõuna-Eesti muinasjutud The Man Who Made The Sun Stand Still. South-Estonian Fairy Tales English translation by Ilmar Lehtpere Huma, 2009, pp. 216 Rights’ contact: Ilvi Liive at estlit@estlit.ee No 3 Spring 2011 7
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No 3 Spring 2011 - Estonian Literature

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